Kevin Rudd has hinted extra cash for struggling car manufacturer Holden is imminent ahead of a meeting on Thursday evening with the South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill.

The prime minister told reporters in Adelaide that Holden was “part of Australia’s history and its future”.

Rudd said ensuring Holden had a viable future in Australia was a matter of national interest. “I’m determined to see this auto industry survive into the future,” Rudd said.

The prime minister said policymakers needed to look at 15-year funding horizons for manufacturers. Holden has been lobbying state and federal governments for extra taxpayer assistance to maintain manufacturing operations after 2016.

The industry minister, Kim Carr, has been heading the negotiations with the car-maker. Weatherill has been seeking a meeting with the prime minister for several days.

Assistance for Holden could help calm a strong backlash from the car industry and fleet and salary packaging companies to a recent government crackdown on fringe benefit tax (FBT) concessions. The crackdown was announced as part of $1.8bn worth of savings associated with an early move to a floating carbon price.

Rudd’s comments on Thursday evening come as the government is scrambling to wrap up an economic policy statement it wants released before the federal election.

Cabinet’s expenditure review committee will meet on Friday, and an announcement of revised forecasts is expected, at this stage, early next week.

There is continuing speculation about cuts to be unveiled in the new document, to plug what are expected to be significant revenue holes caused by weak tax revenues. The government must also offset new spending associated with recent policy shifts, including the regional asylum agreement with Papua New Guinea.

The Gillard government pledged in the May budget to return to an $800m surplus in 2015-16, and thus far Rudd has signalled his intention to maintain a surplus for that financial year. But further budget cuts so close to an election will make life difficult for Labor politically – as the FBT case study underscores.

The finance minister, Penny Wong, on Thursday refused to rule out cuts to the schoolkids bonus – a cash payment of $820 to parents with school aged children – or to engage on specifics associated with the statement.

“The schoolkids bonus is a very important policy area, but I am certainly not going to be drawn ahead of the economic statement on ruling things in, or ruling things out,” Wong said in Melbourne.

The government wants the economic statement in the public domain before firing the starter’s gun on the election campaign. It thinks the statement will help frame the economic debate before the release of the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook (PEFO). That document is released by the secretaries of treasury and finance within 10 days of the issue of the writ for a general election.